There’s a much more serious feel to Lent now. Normally I enjoy Lent as a time to focus on some new practice or helpful habit like (for instance, this year) listening to a poem every day around 4-5pm (that’s the lull in the day when I’m tipping inexorably from productivity to sleepy down time (know…

Visited a pleasant town with nice coffee shops. Took the car. Drove slowly. Read my book at a window seat facing a sunny street, not wearing my dog collar, not looking at my phone. Ignoring deadly viruses and failed impeachment trials I perused a new painting on the cafe wall. Smelled my flat white. Noticed…

It might seem an odd question, but it’s often quite difficult to categorise what is ‘work’, and how much to ‘work’ when you’re a priest, or even if the word is at all helpful to describe what a priest does. Having recently changed posts from part time, to ‘full time’ (and no, I haven’t worked…

Recently the Church of England published a ‘digital charter’ encouraging online behaviour to be consistent with values of kindness, respect and tolerance for different views. As one headline put it: ‘Thou shalt not tweet in anger’. It was all helpful stuff, but stopped short of reflection on the possible spiritual effects of spending large amounts…

The first time a wise minister suggested to me that all ministry should flow from a place of rest, I had no idea what he was talking about. I probably thought, ‘it’s alright for you mate, you’re retired’ (which he was). Nonetheless I decided to think about what he said, ponder it, chew it over….

They say that a cracked mug mended, is stronger along the glue line than it was before it broke. Like the wound has somehow made it better. We have a number of cracked mugs in the utility room which have yet to prove this theory. I buy strong glue. Usually it comes in two tubes….

I had a virus on my laptop. To be specific, a browser hijacker. It meant every time I logged onto Google to open any internet page (which is probably in a normal day, about 30-40 times) it reverted to a bogus homepage, pretending to be Google, in Google colours, with weird shopping button and invitation to…

From time to time someone asks what is the ‘greatest challenge facing the church today’ or the church of the future, or some other construction of the same kind of question. It’s a fun one to wade into, but the best answer I ever came across was the best, I think, because it was so…

I’ve been doing “The Exercises” and I don’t mean pilates (I do that as well) but the Exercises of St Ignatius, a sixteenth century saint who founded the Jesuits. Ignatius was a romantic and a knight who dreamt of glory and heroism in battle. (He was probably a 4 on the Enneagram, which is why…

There’s a trend for clergy to decry busyness and I get it. Being busy has become a badge of honour, especially among the middle classes. For some reason, lots of people also want their priest to be busy and they naturally assume that you are, so you go along with it, because it makes you…

Someone wise said something to me recently that has helped me navigate the sometimes mundane and irritatingly recurrent problems of semi rural – indeed most types of – church life (keys, parking, invoices, emails, damp, heating, grass mowing). It acknowledged that these daily annoyances are never far from the real life of a minister but…

Some days it can feel like a brick wall. Life can be utterly obdurate, like an unwilling child dragging their heels along the supermarket aisle, giving you hell in public. We pray to be saved from ordeals, but they mostly come anyway. Thankfully God knows we ‘are but dust’. How true, despite advertising giving us…

The best quote of the morning goes to a small child in family worship today, in whose mind something had triggered a feeling of belonging. Who, amid scissors, paper and general messiness between the choir pews (no, we have no tables, chairs, separate Sunday School room, only lovely mess on the floor), announced to all…

Your parish priest has a hidden agenda, and I’m about to reveal what it is. You know that seemingly innocent coffee you were having with your caring minister? The one you offered when your vicar said ‘I haven’t seen you for a while – shall we have a coffee?’ and you replied ‘yes, that’d be…